


tell my love to wreck it all

by myownremedy



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, F/M, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 06:16:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1294510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownremedy/pseuds/myownremedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I hate your wife.” She whispers. “I hate my husband. I hate them.”<br/>Anders takes a drink. “I know,” he admits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tell my love to wreck it all

**Author's Note:**

> This is set right after the events of 3.8 "Unfinished Business." Title from Bon Iver's "Skinny Love."  
> For Lindsey & Heather.
> 
> Kara/Lee and Anders/Kara are background, Dee/Billy is past and Dee/Lee is only at the very end.
> 
> Disclaimer: if Aaron Sorkin gets to write grossly inaccurate RPF about Mark Zuckerberg and make a lot of money off of it and win an oscar, I get to write this and make absolutely no money.  
> edit (4-13-15): this is a transformative work. I make no money off of it. I do not own what inspired this work (Battlestar Galactica), but I do own this work itself and hold full copyright over it. Thank you.

Dee watches Kara Thrace punch her husband in the mouth and wonders if that’s how she kisses Lee; angrily, afraid he’ll be snatched away again.

She understands the feeling.

Lee punches back, blood smeared over his left temple and Dee clenches her fists by her side. She does not shake. She does not look away.

“What are they doing?” Anders is there - Kara’s husband.

“What does it look like?” Dee asks, and she wants to know, doesn’t ask it to be a smart ass. Does it look like they’re making love with their fists?

“It looks like they’re trying to kill each other.”

Dee thinks about this, mouth quirking. “That’s one way to look at it.”

Anders shoots her a quick look, eyes hard and Dee meets his gaze calmly.

 _I’ve been stupid_ , she thinks about telling him. _We both have_.

Kara falls and Anders flinches, takes a step forward; then Kara uses a foot to sweep Lee’s legs out from under him. Lee goes down hard.

Dee realizes she doesn’t know who she wants to win.

Kara punches Lee and Dee thinks that he deserves it. Lee strikes back and Dee enjoys it, because she hates Kara Thrace right now, hates her for stealing her husband. He’s always loved her, always looked at her when he was supposed to look at Dee. How had she thought that would change?

They stagger together, locked in what looks like an embrace, trying to punch each other’s ribs and Dee finds herself chewing on a thumbnail, pulls her hand away from her mouth.

Anders places an enormous hand on the small of her back. She glances up at him, quick, sees his mouth tucked down, shoulders rounded, the reality of it all crashing in.

“Look,” Anders tells her and she obeys, stares at their spouses embracing, Kara crying, Lee rubbing her back.

His lips are working, like he’s whispering something and Dee doesn’t want to know what it is. She doesn’t want to be here at all.

“I’m done,” she says, and escapes.

 

*

 

Marriage complicates things. That’s what her mother had told her, the first time a boy had asked Dee to marry him, and Dee had laughed him away. She was going to enlist, she was going to be an officer, she didn’t have time to get married.

“You’ll be ready one day,” her mother told her. “But remember: marriage complicates things.”

“I can imagine,” Dee is still giggling. “I’m barely eighteen and he wants to get _married_? Maybe when I’m thirty.”

“Things change, Ana,” her mother had said. “People change. Marriage changes people, makes them more desperate, more dedicated. Makes everything hurt a bit more.”

“Now I never want to get married,” Dee had retorted, and her mother had laughed.

 

*

 

The ship is deserted, besides the people unlucky enough to be on shift during the dance. Dee stops in the officers lounge and smiles at Helo and Athena, grabs a bottle of the shitty moonshine Chief specializes in making and walks out again. She doesn’t really have a conscious plan; instead she walks down long metal hallways and checks things off.

 _That’s where I kissed Billy for the first time, after the attack._ She swings a left, walks faster, passes the washroom - _that’s where I met Billy for the first time_ \- and turns around, taking a side route to the front of the ship. She does not pass where Billy proposed to her.

Marriage complicates things.

 

Billy seems to be with her tonight, a presence she can almost sense. It’s like he’s walking beside her, guiding her. Maybe that’s why she finds herself in the forward observation deck. Instead of sitting on a couch, she goes to the window and slumps agains it, peering outside.

Space greets her. Empty, dark, cold, foreign. No oxygen, no gravity.

Dee decides it’s time for a drink.

 

*

 

Dee is drunk when Anders finds her.

“Where’s your husband?” he asks, leaning against a pillar with his arms crossed over his chest. Dee laughs. It’s a ragged sound.

“Probably with your wife.”

Anders stares. “That’s not what I meant.” he says finally. “I - why are you drinking alone?”

“Oh, Anders, don’t play dumb.” Dee sets the jar on the floor next to her and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “You saw them. My stupid, selfish husband and your stupid, selfish wife.” She laughs again - she can’t stop. “They’re so in love and so frakking selfish that they’ve forgotten all about us.”

“Me and Kara aren’t together anymore,” Anders says quietly.

“Yeah?” Dee raises an eyebrow. “Well Lee and I are. We’re married. Not that it seems to make a difference.” She shakes her head. “I never should have married him. Or I should have married Billy. Frak.”

Anders moves until he’s sitting next to her. Dee pushes the jar towards him. “Who’s Billy?”

“He was Roslin’s Aid during her first term, and we were...involved. But he wanted to marry me and I was in love with Lee. And he found out, right before he died trying to protect me.”

“Seems to be a theme,” Anders mutters and Dee laughs again.

“You’re right, you’re frakking right. This is karma, isn’t it?”

“No,” Anders says, eyes holding hers. “No one deserves this, Dee.”

She stops laughing, abruptly.

“I hate your wife.” She whispers. “I hate my husband. I hate them.”

Anders takes a drink. “I know,” he admits. “Sometimes I do too. How does that happen? You love someone so much, and they become a stranger.”

“I knew what I was getting into,” Anders hands her the jar and Dee takes a swig. “He’s always looked at Kara in that way - the way he never looks at me. But I thought maybe I was enough, maybe he could love me differently but it would be enough.”

“I never knew I had competition til I came on the frakking ship, and for a while it worked out -” Anders jaw clenched. “I knew, but I didn’t want too, you know? Thought it didn’t matter anymore.”

“But it does.” Dee thinks if someone cut into her right now, they’d only find a hollow inside her, no organs or blood or heart, just an empty space as dark and soulless as space. “We’re the ones that don’t matter.”

“Don’t say that,” Anders says, gently, and Dee ignores him.

“They probably make love and don’t think about us at all - or whenever he made love to me, whenever he was kissing me, he was thinking of her -”

Anders presses one huge hand over her mouth. “Don’t.” he orders, voice tight. “She’s still my wife.”

“Where is she, then?” Dee asks against his hand. “Why are you here with me instead?”

Anders takes his hand away and seems to shrink. “Because you’re the only one who knows what it’s like.”

 

“This is killing me,” Dee whispers, and kisses him.

He’s different then Lee, much bigger in every sense of the word - taller, broader, more muscular. His big hands settle on her waist and he kisses her back, sweet and gentle. She doesn’t want gentle, wants to punch him and lick away the blood, but she’s not mad at him, she’s mad at Lee.

“This isn’t gonna fix anything,” Anders whispers when they break apart. “Hurting them won’t fix us.”

“Shut up,” Dee whispers back. She’s crying, doesn’t know when that happened or why, and goes to wipe away the tears, but then Anders is there. Kissing each tear tract. Kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her mouth. Her neck. Sucking a mark there, darker then her already dark skin, just below her regulation collar. She unbuttons her uniform and Anders catches both her hands in one of his, and kisses her palm.

“I don’t -”

“I love her,” Anders tells her, and presses his lips to her jaw. “I love her so much, and she won’t let me.”

 

Anders undresses her, unbuttoning her top, unbuckling her belt, unzipping her fly. He strips off her socks, her pants, her blouse, her tank top, her bra. It’s dark in the observation deck, and Dee can only see flashes of Anders - his teeth, the curve of his neck, his eyes, his hands.

He grabs at the bottom of his shirt and takes it off, the way all men must take off their shirts and Dee reaches out to touch him, traces the scars on his chest, the trail of hair disappearing into his pants. She doesn’t touch the tattoo he shares with Kara.

She thinks that the observation deck is full of people watching them - Kara and Lee, entangled together, eyes dark. Billy, lurking in the shadows, watching someone else touch her the way he never got too.

Anders kisses a line from her neck to her breasts, takes one nipple into his mouth and pinches the other one. Heat rips through Dee and she arches off the ground, whimpering, hands scrabbling against Anders’ shoulders.

He’s muttering into her skin and Dee wonders if he sees her or if he sees Kara, squints down at his head and can almost see Lee. It’s like she’s with both of them, like she’s Kara and he’s Lee.

She’s still crying. Anders kisses her belly, then her cunt, brushing against her labia with his fingertips and she squirms away.

“I want it to hurt,” she tells him, thinks he could hold her against the window of the observation deck and fuck her against it. She could get on her hands and knees, he could pull on her hair, bite her neck. She wants Lee to know she was with someone else.

“No,” Anders says flatly, kissing her thigh. He looks up at her. “You’re hurting enough.”

“We’re.”

“We’re,” Anders agrees.

 

He kisses her forehead as he slides into her. Dee whimpers, feeling herself stretch to accommodate him, and rakes her nails down her back. Muscles flex beneath her hands, and Anders pulls out, then thrusts back inside, a long, smooth motion that makes them both groan.

“You thinking about him?” Anders asks, bracing himself above her. Dee shakes her head.

“You thinking about her?” She challenges and Anders smiles.

“It’s not possible to be with you and think of anyone else,” he tells her, and Dee bites her lip. “Hey - no, don’t cry.”

“I wish -” She rolls her hips up, making Anders gasp. “I wish he saw it that way.”

“Don’t let them have this,” Anders says, fucking into her. “This is for us.”

“Us,” Dee breathes, tasting the word. Anders kisses her, gentle, and it tastes like redemption.

_Us._

 

*

 

Lee finds her the next morning in their shared quarters. He bends down to kiss her on the forehead and Dee lets him, focusing on the reports Gaeta has sent over.

“Morning,” Lee says. He sounds lazy and in a good mood, and Dee grits her teeth.

“Morning,” she replies. Lee kisses her on the cheek, then down to her neck - and pauses. He presses one finger into the mark Anders left her. His voice is suddenly - fragile.

“Where did you get that?” He asks.

Dee stands and turns to look at him. She touches the cut Kara gave him, across his cheek, the one from her punch that looked like a desperate, angry kiss.

“Where’d you get that?” She retorts.

“Dee.” Lee snaps. “Where did you get that?”

“None of your business.” She tells her, pulling on her uniform blouse and buttoning it up.

Lee grabs her arm. “You’re my _wife_ ,” he says, desperate, jaw clenched.

“Am i?” Dee hears herself laugh, the same ragged laugh from last night. “That doesn’t seem to be stopping you.”

Lee flinches. Dee pulls her arm out of his grip, and leaves.

He doesn’t try to stop her.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [visit me on tumblr!](http://marnz.tumblr.com/) prompts welcome.


End file.
